Re:The Challenges of Being in the New Contract Workforce
by adventured on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @03:35PM
(#16217400)
> You're certainly more exposed to downturns
At the same time, companies fire by the millions in aggregate in a recessionary environment. Or worse, your employer simply vaporizes and goes out of business, which similarly happens in droves.
If you're a contractor, your exposure depends on who you're doing business with, how strong their circumstances are, just as it does when it comes to who is employing you.
The U6 went up to ~17.5% during the great recession. There is a very small group of elite tech companies that weathered that storm without firing people. Google is up at 80,000 employees now, Microsoft is at 125,000. Do they avoid layoffs in the next recession? I'm skeptical. Microsoft has almost no growth, any recession would hit them hard. Google's growth is 1/3 what it was ten years ago, a recession would slam their ad business and bring their growth down toward single digits.
At the same time, companies fire by the millions in aggregate in a recessionary environment. Or worse, your employer simply vaporizes and goes out of business, which similarly happens in droves.
If you're a contractor, your exposure depends on who you're doing business with, how strong their circumstances are, just as it does when it comes to who is employing you.
The U6 went up to ~17.5% during the great recession. There is a very small group of elite tech companies that weathered that storm without firing people. Google is up at 80,000 employees now, Microsoft is at 125,000. Do they avoid layoffs in the next recession? I'm skeptical. Microsoft has almost no growth, any recession would hit them hard. Google's growth is 1/3 what it was ten years ago, a recession would slam their ad business and bring their growth down toward single digits.